The present invention relates to an apparatus for sorting fruit by size.
It is often necessary or desirable to sort fruit by size. For example, with the manufacture of orange juice, the oranges to be processed into orange juice must be sorted into, e.g., five different size groups, with each size group processed by different juice extraction machinery. Juice extractors typically include cups for holding the fruit while it is sliced in half and then reamed or squeezed to extract the juice. However, to efficiently extract juice from the fruit, the cup size must be approximately matched to the size of the fruit being processed.
Certain disadvantages may arise when the fruit size is not properly matched to the cup size of the juice extraction machinery. One disadvantage is that due to the size mismatch, all of the available juice within a fruit may not be extracted, resulting in a loss of a portion of the available juice. In addition, with such a size mismatch the rind of the fruit may be unintentionally engaged by a reamer or otherwise crushed or ruptured, thereby releasing bitter fruit oils and other undesirable peel components from the rind which mix with and degrade the quality of the extracted juice. A mismatch may occur when a small fruit is inadvertently carried to a large size juice extractor or conversely when a large fruit is inadvertently directed into a small size juice extractor.
Previous fruit sizers such as those utilizing flat conveyor belts have met with varying degrees of success. However, they have several inherent disadvantages. One such disadvantage is the inability of known fruit sizers to consistently size fruit and prevent small size fruit from inadvertently being carried along with larger fruit to a large size fruit juice extractor. This disadvantage typically arises when a small size fruit is surrounded by larger fruit on the flat conveyor belt such that the small fruit is sandwiched and carried along with the larger fruit. As previously described, this may result in reaming of the fruit rind in a large size fruit extractor and the subsequent degradation of juice quality by virtue of the released fruit oils and other undesirable peel components.
In addition, existing fruit sizers having flat conveyor belts require a substantial travel length in order to separate the fruit and sort it by size. These known sizers are large and bulky and require heavy structural members and frames. As a result, they are expensive to build and maintain. Their large size and flat belt configuration also makes them difficult to clean. Typically, cat-walks are provided along both sides of the length of these known sizers because their large width prevents sufficient access for cleaning from one side only. Moreover, varying the spacing between the flat belts and the rollers, to adjust for fruit size, tends to be difficult and time consuming with these sizers, due to the large number of individually driven rollers.
In operation, the motion imparted to the fruit by the flat belt and rollers in these known devices does not always sufficiently break up clusters of fruit, such that small fruit may be carried along with larger fruit to a large size fruit juice extractor, leading to degradation of fruit juice quality. The moving flat belts of these known fruit sizers may also tend to "throw" fruit forward causing the fruit to overshoot the appropriate sizing station.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a fruit sizing apparatus which effectively sorts fruit by size.
It is the further object of the invention to provide such an apparatus which is compact and relatively lightweight.
It is the further object of the invention to provide such an apparatus which is relatively easy to clean and to adjust.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide such an apparatus that effectively breaks up clusters of large and small fruit to maintain high quality juice extraction.
Other and further objects will appear hereinafter.